NexTEST

At the request of a few guys, I put up a test league to test sliders and such.

I've loaded slider in, advanced to week 1. If you want to join and play some games to give me some slider feedback, find someone to play, look at the week 1 NFL schedule here: http://www.nfl.com/schedules/2013/REG1
and the two of you join as teams that play each other.
Be warned, the clock is on 15 minutes with 12 second runoff...if the games are super long I'll adjust it down, not sure how it's going to work since accelerated clock didn't work when I started TMFL.

So first game here are the results. I lost 65-21, ok its not what it looks like, I think I had like 7-8 Fumbles and only 1 int so here are the stats and my thoughts:

QB Raiders (Me using Pryor) 30/45 for 386 yards 1 TD and 1 INT

QB Colts Luck11-13 239 3 tds 1 pick

QB Colts Hassellbeck4 – 7 96 0 tds 0 picks

Rushing game

Colts – Bradshaw 15 carries 236 yards 3 TDS

Raiders Latavious Murry – 22 carries 125 yards

Raiders Rashad Jennings 14 carries 52 yards

Raiders Pryor 4 Carries 34 yards

Raiders defense 5 sacks 1 pick no fumbles

Colts defense 4 sacks 1 pick 7 fumbles and 6 recovered

So first off, the game last just about over an hour long so wasn’t that bad. I wonder how it will be user vs user, madden tends to cater to big plays so if we play 15 min, stats may get out of hand. We’ll see

Kick off power, janikowski hit it out of the back at full power, couple times I didn’t get full bar, they were able to return if they choose, but kneeled. SO I think the kick power could be just about right. Playing in indy so no wind.

FG power may need to be decreased, vinitieri hit a 54 yarder with ease. On his best day, he might squeeze that in.

Now to the QBA, Pryor threw 66%, I threw whatever route I could and he pretty much was on the money. IN the 4th though, he started to get a bit off missing like 3 straight throws not even close, but for the most part, he was pretty much on point on the throws on both completed passes and incompletes 1st to 3rd quarter. CPU qb, well they were on the money most of the day.

Running, I had a bit of trouble running since im used to current gen lack of defense. So started off slow with Latavious murray who is a 65 ovr I think, eventually got the hang of it and was able to run at almost 6 yards per carry with him, not sure why mcfadden was inactive. People wont be able to wiggle their way with the left stick anymore, but the juke still make the defenders freeze.

Ahmad bradshaw went crazy, all his big runs which he had like 4 were all outside runs, the wr was holding the hell out of the defender and couldn’t release, may need to decrease the run blocking a bit or at least increase the tackling slider which I believe increases block shedding. Now this was user vs cpu, not sure how user vs user will do, but usualy, users run better than cpu.

The reason why my score was out of hand, well I wasn’t really trying to win, I played the game like it was a close score so I can get an accurate measurement of how long the game would last on this time and clock acceleration. But my team had 4 redzone fumbles and one when im was running into the endzone and my guy got hit from behind and they recovered as a touchback. As mentioned above 7 forced fumbles and 6 recovered. Sometimes the defenders came in so fast I had no chance to cover up. Fumble slider is already at 4, so not sure what we can do at this point.

As for coverage, coverage wasn’t bad on my end, luck and hassellbeck kept making good throws, but my guys were in contention. Overall the coverage is better than current gen, but the same routes will still work with smaller windows, cbs still play a little retarded on outs and curls, but at least sometimes my cb actually jumped a couple which was cool. In current gen, never would they jump the route, x1 version they at least do it every so often.

Pass rush, nine sacks total between two teams, playing action will be a real risk this time around. You will need to get rid of the ball quick because sometimes the defenders just comes right through on both pass rush and rush defense. Somewhat refreshing to see an OL actually whiff and just blow a play every once in awhile. The short yardage was pretty tough to get as well.

Overall for me, vs CPU, increase tackling, decrease run blocking as a start. Once I play another user, we’ll see

observations
Game played well... Sliders felt pretty good. Couple of times faster players were caught from behind by guys that should not have caught them. Passing game seemed pretty good... Aside from having a cold Ponder and outmatched on sticks against Kasper.